(UPDATE x3 - Progress Report - DEC 2018)RetroArch and its Libretro Cores have invaded just about every electronic device known to man it seems, as the retro emulation project continues to grow its ecosystem and support a vast amount of platforms, With ports to the PS3, PS Vita, PlayStationTV, PSP & so many other supported platforms (seen here), many PlayStation 2 fans were left wonder if a PS2 port would ever arise and some wondered if it was even doable. Well the libretro team via twitter has answered some of those question with an announcement of an in development RetroArch PS2 Port. This is still early but its good news to see some progress and knowing that this could be coming a reality soon for the PS2 community. ​

We've had PlayStation3, PSP, and PS Vita ports of RetroArch. Now @fjtrujy is working on a PlayStation2 RetroArch port! What you can see here is RGUI being rendered to the screen on a real PS2! Early days but a lot of progress already made!

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January 2019 UPDATE

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Moving slowly but still progressing, here you are the RetroArch's RGUI running in the PS2, fullscreen and with perfect colors. A step closer[email protected]fjtrujy

Oct 17 This time is the turn to show the PS2, RetroArch and how the controller works. Still a world ahead... @libretro

Oct 29 Big progress with RetroArch for PS2, here you are a test-core running on real console. Colors need adjustment but so far it has been a huge step after replace the unstable method in the libc for PS2SDK. @libretro

10x UPDATE (January 20) - Now the 10th Video Released >>> The next PS3 NVidia RSX accelerated X.org steps(Original Article from Nov. 14) Is the PS3 a bit closer to gaining Hardware Acceleration (via RSX) in OtherOS (Linux) with a proper driver to enable the GPU chip? We are not there, but we may be getting closer to a reality. Earlier this year (back in April) we detailed some of the progress that the busy dev RenéRebe has made with unlocking the potential of the PlayStation 3's RSX chip and now today we have been greeted with a new video and what we can expect with this project as the developer starts to undertake the challenge of further unlocking one more component of the Ps3 hardware,. The developer has alot of videos on other intresting subjects in his diverse YouTube channel >>> (Bits and More) <<< many very informative video's..​

Following the big news from Team Molecule several weeks ago and effectively opening the system wide open, it was only a matter of time before we would start to see other developer's start putting the finding to use and we have seen the FAPS Team (team members listed below)have recently released a new (taiHEN) plugin called ref00d, this plugin is a big deal, as it will allows users/devs to use content that would otherwise require a higher firmware to be played/executed on a lower firmware for your exploited PS Vita or PlayStation TV. Typically not an easy task to reach but thanks to Team Molecule's research and the FAPS Team we now have a ready to use simple plugin solution to remove those firmware restrictions, see additional details about this plugin release in the release notes provided below by the development team.
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Update (2x): Reports are coming in this PS2 Homebrew is also working on PS3 HAN & PS4 (5.05). With progress making headway on the upcoming PS4 port of RetroArch from a group of developer's, Another developer (fjtrujy) started progress on a PlayStation 2 (PS2) port several months back (view previous progress) and now has a port that progressed enough for a public soft release, Now available in the new RetroArch PS2 Nighties for anyone interested in downloading and trying out the multi-system emulator on your homebrew capable PS2 hardware. @fjtrujy warns that many things need implemented yet and many pending issue remain and only these early release contains two cores currently 2048 and QuickNES. Which is likely to grow and a good gauge to base what is expected for the PS2 port, Would be to view the PSP as that should be a good baseline of what to expect and the PS2 may be able to handy more then the PSP likely.​

We will see. Maybe there will be some new cores? PS3 port is not so bad, but for sure need some polishing. But PS2 is MIPS that is closer to PSP (at least closer than to ps3). So maybe devs will found it easier to program than custom PPC.

Theoretically this is great new, but...
does there will be any advantages
between other emulators for PS2 (SNES-Station, FCEU, PicoDrive, etc)?

Does even the port for PS3 works properly?

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In regards to the PS3 version.

v1.0.0.2 and below of RetroArch are pretty solid.
Then a complete overall went into the project with new UI, PS3 port went missing, it did retrun around v1.3 but until v1.6x the UI contained bugs but that did start to iron out those out on the PS3 port. Here in v1.7.x its just been getting the correct cores lineup. Which they are doing so now, next update should be very stable as the correct cores should be included.

Overall i think there will be some advantages. How many cores the port will have will be the intriguing question.

Edit:@kozarovv thanks for the post,!!! i made some changes for the news page.

Here is the PSP Core lineup which i was estimate to be close (give or take a few cores who knows,)

81

fceumm

fmsx

fuse

gambatte

gw

mednafen_pce_fast

nxengine

picodrive

quicknes

snes9x2005

snes9x2005_plus

tempgba

So some of those emu's already on the PS2, these would be updated versions of the emulator itself..

Generally, that's quite cool!
Retroarch allows a whole collection of old consoles to be emulated, but the issue I have with the structure&approach in libretro/Retroarch is, that it is actually VERY inefficient regarding emulation!
It solely enables us to port a lot of emulators, via porting libretro...!

32Bit-cores are probably not going to work and an N64-core wouldn't work as well... Both however are quite possible on a dedicated & optimized emulator for the PS2...
I am getting sick and tired of 'unknowledgable' (is that a word?) people, who claim BULLOCKS like 'The PS2 can barely emulate SNES...' (like you can see on the Twitter-account...)

A dedicated N64-Emulator would prove them all wrong! I am even sure it would run better than on an XBOX, because no Opcode-conversion (recompilation/jit/etc.) would be necessary and huuuughe chunks of the PS2 could be used natively, if an 'N64 RTE' (rather than an emulator) would be made for the PS2!

RA is good and all but it is 100%(almost) working only on pc (win and linux, coz macOS has issues afaik here and there)

Any other port is incomplete and just a way to say "Hey retroarch boots here!!"
Even the android version is full of crashes and half working stuff (i mean, is my 4 core arm @2.2Ghz and lots of ram not enough to run a f* n64 without lag?) (yeah, i know the n64 libretro is in a bad shape)

The problem is that RA is not, and will never be, good on a console because it will never have full support and hwa (that is the most important thing)

Also i think that adding as much devices as possible to RA will only increase its code without a real gain for anyone.

I don t expect much from this, but don t mislead my words, i like the idea behind RA, i only think they are handling this in the wrong way.

TnA said:

Retroarch allows a whole collection of old consoles to be emulated, but the issue I have with the structure&approach in libretro/Retroarch is, that it is actually VERY inefficient regarding emulation!

Click to expand...

From what i read, RA is a multimedia app, ie emulators are just addons and not the main features of RA, that s why the approach seems wrong.
This is misleading because most of its users think RA is like an emulator and it is the holy grail of emulation.....while it s not.

And yes, gaming consoles are underrated, they don t have enough power as is, but they run games that are not supposed to run even at 10fps.
The issue is that only a few have the knowledge to write highly optimized code that is able to exploit any hw feature/workaround to gain more power.

One cannot simply run a PlayStation or N64 binary on the PS2. Even though both use the MIPS architectue, that is only the architecture for one processor of these consoles. The peripherals connected to these processors are different, hence at least some address translation is required. Then you still have to emulate the peripherals.

RA is good and all but it is 100%(almost) working only on pc (win and linux, coz macOS has issues afaik here and there)

Any other port is incomplete and just a way to say "Hey retroarch boots here!!"
Even the android version is full of crashes and half working stuff (i mean, is my 4 core arm @2.2Ghz and lots of ram not enough to run a f* n64 without lag?) (yeah, i know the n64 libretro is in a bad shape)

The problem is that RA is not, and will never be, good on a console because it will never have full support and hwa (that is the most important thing)

Also i think that adding as much devices as possible to RA will only increase its code without a real gain for anyone.

I don t expect much from this, but don t mislead my words, i like the idea behind RA, i only think they are handling this in the wrong way.

From what i read, RA is a multimedia app, ie emulators are just addons and not the main features of RA, that s why the approach seems wrong.
This is misleading because most of its users think RA is like an emulator and it is the holy grail of emulation.....while it s not.

And yes, gaming consoles are underrated, they don t have enough power as is, but they run games that are not supposed to run even at 10fps.
The issue is that only a few have the knowledge to write highly optimized code that is able to exploit any hw feature/workaround to gain more power.

Click to expand...

I use Retroarch on the Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii in this use since version 0.9.8 and on my Android TV box MX3-G, Let's leave the PC version out, because the PC has practically all the emulators including the mame ja chew ready to use 100%, let's break the stranger, starting how would play CPS1 and CPS2 on Nintendo Wii? In the android version we have many points to point out, first point colors of emulators that we would never have in the android case of Picodrive, which allows to run 32x sega games in it perfectly, genplusgx, mGBA for me the best gba emulator that exists, snes9x gx which is much lighter than bsnes and allows to run the MSU-1 games perfectly, we have the PCSX_rearmed that runs the psx games perfectly, the FBA Alpha that runs cps1, cps2, cps3 and neogeo perfectly and acora is picking up other arcade game producers for the FBA, even now he runs the Neogeo CD games perfectly, we have ScummVM running perfectly lucas arts games, we have fceumm and nestopia doing perfectly running the games nes, we have the best atari emulator 2600 \ 5200 and 7800, we have the mame2003plus that runs a lot of the mame perfectly including the MK and that has received daily update ..... and we have been working perfectly in the android version or etroarchvaments and the online mode of play, as for the n64 tutorial to use the Parallel64 and go changing the graphic filter, I leave in the graphic filter parallel64, and runs many games including the DK64, of course it will not run any n64 library that nor the project64 wheel , as for the ps2 version we all know its limitation, but we also know the miracles made for it, remember to have bought my first ps2 on 14.04.2004 a ps2 fat 50011 with DMS3, and running the games by the reader was horrible as ever I was scared that the player would spoil, so I came up with the MegaPackBr pro ps2 which was the fuzão of several applications for ps2, including HDLOADER was wonderful, then in 2007 I got rid of this ps2, and only returned to the ps2 scene in 2004 with a ps2 slim 90001 with matrix 1.93, and searching discover two wonderful things of the friend sp193 the FMCB and the OPL Loader imagines to run games until by smb network, it was a dream realized a miracle pro ps2, also we had the Popstarter of the friend krHACK that succeeds launching a good part of the psx games perfectly even by smb network, so I believe in the potential of backarch programmers, who devote themselves to their leisure time, to create homebrews for our beloved and immortal ps2.